We had Lex’s birthday party yesterday. It was fun. We kept it small(ish) this year with just family, two friends who are practically family, and our neighbor, also practically family. There were six kids total and I think that was perfect. We had cupcakes, but no candles or singing. The rain was threatening in the morning, but the afternoon worked out well and we got to play outside a lot. Lex took a few minutes to warm up after his nap and then he had a blast. Overall a successful party!

Here come lots of photos…

Cupcakes!

Eve is ready to party!

Presents

Eve is always ready to party.

More presents

Eve LOVED this new Thomas sticker book. She held it up and yelled 'Look, look everyone!'

The grand finale. A motorized jeep from Grammy Lynn and Grampy Don. The kids were thrilled!

Lex and Eve in the jeep, loading it up with stuff from the lawn.

Eve can't open the door to the mudroom. I walked into the garage and found her like this, yelling 'help me, help me!' I laughed, took her picture, and then helped her.

Molly and Eve

Happy birthday boy eating cupcakes.

Caitlin, lifting weights (the broken wheels from their red ride on car)

Molly

Powerful Dylan!

Riding the in car. Lex and Caitlin with Eve pushing behind.

Eve took the wheel!

Dylan and Eve

Bright and early this morning Lex was up and eager to play with Legos. Eve decided to plaster herself with Thomas stickers. This is how we amuse ourselves at 6am.

Eve dressed for Sunday breakfast.

Rosy and Eve in the car.

After breakfast we went to a craft fair. Eve loved this music. She danced, she smiled, she cuddled and relaxed. The guy singing even made up a song about Eve on the spot. We bought his CD :)

Some photos from the past few days…

Eve fell in the parking lot and scraped her knee. I cleaned it and bandaged it, and when we got home Lex decided it needed decoration so the two of them sat for quite some time coloring on her bandaid.

This picture is a little blurry, but I love their expressions.

Eve tries a delicious summer treat.

Cucumber eyebrows anyone?

Pigtails! Eve saw a girl in Lex's class with pigtails and decided she needed some too.

Lex’s birthday party is tomorrow. I chose not to expand the guest list. Hopefully he’s either forgotten that conversation or not too upset when more friends don’t come tomorrow. He doesn’t talk about it much, other than yesterday’s “I hope I get some toys at my birthday party.” :)

I have some cupcakes made and more to make today. Bread baked and sandwich rolls. I’m going to have a deli kind of spread for food. I think that will work better than trying to do a sit-down dinner. Lex hates those. I’m envisioning a table covered with food and people coming and going, eating inside or outside (fingers crossed for a beautiful day!) I still have to make more cupcakes and I’m going to attempt a delicious looking tart. Why? Because I want to!

The weather has been beautiful lately. I haven’t gotten much done outside because every time we go outside the kids just want to play at the neighbor’s house. I’m struggling with that a bit. They are welcome there and I don’t even need to stick around, except that I want to. The neighbor’s keep telling me to go home, enjoy the break, but I can’t. Not sure why. Mostly I think it’s because I love my kids and want to play with them, but instead I spend hours sitting in the neighbors backyard. Sigh. More on that later, I’m sure. I think I have to work some things out internally first. My babies are growing up!

I’m in a bit of a funk this week and hoping that a family filled weekend with cupcakes will help! :)

Today has been a weird one.  We woke up around the normal time, the kids got themselves dressed, but then Lex decided his shirt wasn’t comfortable and the day went down hill from there.  Yes, downhill from 6:30am.  Temporarily.  His shirt had an iron-on type graphic on the front which he didn’t think was comfortable (can’t say I blame him).  I sent him upstairs for a new shirt, but instead he had a total meltdown.  Refused all 13 (yes, 13!) t-shirts in his drawer.  Why? “They don’t look right.” Sadly he can’t define “right” for me. Then he took off his shorts.  I ended up fighting with him to just put something on.  Anything!  I told him long sleeves were fine, short sleeves, pjs, whatever, anything.  His reply was clear, “I will not!”  So he missed school this morning and Eve and I missed our playdate.  I told him if he wasn’t in school then he had to stay in his room, so there he stayed until 10am when I finally let Eve play with him.  Eve and I had just finished exercising and I needed a shower, so I figured it would be better to let them play instead of turning on the TV for her.  So from 10-11:30 they played together upstairs.  Very happily.  It was weird.  Then we had lunch, stories and an easy nap.  I didn’t feel like yesterday was that busy, but perhaps the excitement of his birthday was enough to exhaust him.  I don’t know.  He is one puzzle after another.  We have swimming lessons this afternoon so we’ll see how that goes.  I’m not going to force him into the water, but hopefully he’ll at least come along nicely so she can have her lesson.  Or maybe he’ll be raring to go and eager to swim.  You just never know!

He asked last night if he could invite his classmates to his party this weekend.  I said no because we had discussed the idea of a class party for a few weeks and he eventually decided not to have one, now it’s too late.  Then he asked if he could just have a few kids.  I said I’d think about it, but this morning’s behavior was giving Alan and I flashbacks to last year’s party so we decided no extra guests!  We have a few kids already coming that will be enough.  I hope.

Here are a few pictures and a video of how Eve and I entertained ourselves on this unexpected morning at home.

People talk a lot about societal expectations, or peer pressure, but what I find stresses me out the most is self expectations. I am constantly balancing what I think would be fun for the family to do, what would be a great summer activity or memory, versus what my family can actually handle.

The other day our neighbors invited the kids to have a picnic lunch. It was getting pretty close to nap time, but the kids were all playing together nicely and I want my kids to have nice summer activities, so I agreed… knowing I was likely setting myself up for disaster. Sure enough, when I got them inside they were over tired and crabby and neither of them napped. Ugh. We got invited to a kids movie this week with a few other kids, which would have been fun, but it was at 2pm and I know would have screwed up naps and the rest of the day. The past few days have been HOT (98° today!) and I keep thinking I should get the kids outside or to a lake or something, but they have been so happy playing inside. We’ve stayed inside because they were happy and I am lazy, but that nagging part of me keeps saying “summer fun, they are missing summer fun, lasting memories, get out and do something!” Last night, after a busy day, the ice cream truck came to our neighborhood. Can you believe it?! The funniest part was my friend and I were talking about ice cream trucks that morning and how cute and antiquated the idea is… then sure enough there’s an ice cream truck! It was on the street behind my house and the kids and I watched through the window. In my mind I was debating about how to respond when it came to our street and the kids asked for ice cream. Do I say “yes” because it’s a fun summer experience and we might not get the chance again (this is the first time I’ve seen a truck come here in the three years I’ve lived here!), or do I say “no” because it’s 7:30pm, bedtime, and the kids have already been sugared up for the day. It was Lex’s birthday after all! I had decided to be the bad guy and say no because otherwise our already potentially risky bedtime would completely fall to shambles, but then I got lucky, in two ways. First, for some reason, the truck never came to our street. We had just gotten home so perhaps it came to our street first, I’m not sure. Second, the kids didn’t seem to get it anyway. They didn’t look out the front window, patiently waiting, wondering why it wasn’t coming. They didn’t ask for ice cream. They didn’t get upset.  After the excitement of seeing it wore off the only other comment I heard was sweet Lex saying, “Wouldn’t it be fun if some other day, on a hot summer day, after naptime, the ice cream truck came to our house?” :) I said “yes!”

Anyway, now they are both sleeping and I’m sitting here with my own pressures. I really want to watch the season finale of FlashForward on Hulu. A show Alan doesn’t like, so I rarely get the chance to watch it. However, it’s a beautiful day (HOT!), the garden needs planting, the house needs tidying, I have a to-do list a mile long… sigh. I’ll probably waste all of naptime on the computer anyway.

Look at this awesome picture Michelle took at her house last month when she was babysitting my kids. I can barely get two kids smiling at once and she got all four of them!! I’m going to miss her!